This invention relates generally to acoustical transducers and particularly to a transducer of the bender type which simultaneously produces dual output signals in both the conventional and overtone resonance modes.
Transducers of the bender type include a pair of spaced active components in the form of juxtaposed ceramic discs which are normally backed by rigid supporting discs such as made from aluminum and mounted so as to undergo flexure when subjected to an input voltage signal. The input voltage, when connected between electrodes of the opposed faces of each disc, gives rise to a flexure within the disc thereby generating acoustic energy outputs therefrom. In prior art arrangements, the discs, with attached supporting plates, are arranged either singly or in combination with adjacently spaced similar structure to provide singular acoustic outputs in the fundamental resonace mode. Acccordingly, in order to produce a broadband array of such arrangements a plurality of discs, each operating within a partitioned frequency segment of the array bandwidth, are interconnected in order to provide acoustic energy across the required frequency band. For large bandwidth requirements, this results in a relatively bulky, complex, and costly arrangement for the production of broadband acoustic energy.